Racist jailed after taunting Jewish woman with Hitler Youth flag

Nicholas Goodwin, 23, sent a Jewish mother a photo of himself with a Hitler Youth flag, after she stopped him from contacting her son.

The photo depicts Goodwin and Callum Cochrane smiling as they posed with the flag. Elissa Wilson, their target, received the vile image via Facebook on January 29 – two days after Holocaust Memorial Day.

Goodwin, admitted the charge of racially aggravated harassment, and received a six-month prison sentence. Cochrane escaped sentencing because he did not send or create the image.

Wilson praised the sentencing and told the Daily Record, “Six million Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust. For anyone to glorify that is just vile. I’m delighted with the sentence. It shows that things like this are taken seriously.”

That sentence adds to an increasing list of crimes committed by Goodwin. Last month, he appeared in court after threatening to stab a 16-year-old, Goodwin and another person, hurled racist abuse at the victim. The judge noted that Goodwin was currently serving three concurrent prison terms at Low Moss Prison.

But the problem of antisemitism in Scotland is not limited to online racists.

In spite of falling hate crimes in Scotland, the Scottish Council of Jewish Communities noted that 4 per cent of religious hate crimes are antisemitic in nature. That number seems small; but Scotland’s Jewish population totals just 0.1 per cent (or 6,000).

Figures reveal that charges of antisemitism increased from 12 in 2013/2014 to 25 in 2014/2015 (an increase of 108%). That figure mirrors the 27 charges in 2012/2013.

But as the Community Security Trust noted, this rise may reflect an increased confidence in reporting hate crimes.

Islamophobic hate charges also increased by 47.9 per (a jump from 48 to 71 charges). Muslim communities in Scotland total just 1.4 per cent of the population. Yet, the number of Islamophobic charges falls just short of the 80 recorded in 2012/2013.